Yoakum native remembered as avid outdoors, family man

By BY BRIAN RASH - SPECIAL TO THE ADVOCATE
April 22, 2013 at 11 p.m.Updated April 22, 2013 at 11:23 p.m.

Lynette Pate remembers her son as an outdoorsy person who hated to be cooped up inside watching television or playing video games.

Friends and family gathered Monday to reflect on a life that ended unexpectedly when Pate's son, Tyler Addison Pate, 22, was found dead about 5 a.m. Friday after drowning during a feral hog hunt.

"He loved to hunt and fish, and he didn't mind hard work," his mother said. "He was not a sit-arounder."

Early reports suggest that the Yoakum native's drowning was accidental, said Gonzales County Sheriff Glen Sachtleben. Pate was pronounced dead at the scene by Justice of the Peace Deidra Voigt, and an autopsy was ordered.

Sachtleben said Pate drowned after jumping into the Guadalupe River to chase after his hunting dogs, who swam ahead of him roughly a mile east of the river's junction with Peach Creek.

Sachtleben does not suspect foul play.

"There is nothing to indicate that there was anything untoward about this," he said. "This appears to have been a normal activity for this group."

Activities like this were what Pate lived for, his mother said.

Beyond that, he also loved animals and raised goats under the tutelage of the Future Farmers of America, an organization that fostered his love of the outdoors.

Pate's mother said her son leaves behind a fiancee and 1-month-old daughter and had steadfast plans to become an oil driller.